Early Life
David's father, Arthur R White, was a porter at Billingsgate Fish Market, and his Welsh-born mother, Olwen Jones, worked as a charwoman. She gave birth to twin boys in Edmonton, North London in February 1940, but David's twin brother died during child-birth. It is an urban myth that he chose the name Jason as a tribute to his dead twin: David Jason himself has denied this.
Jason's elder brother is the actor Arthur White, born in 1933. The two have appeared together in the crime drama A Touch of Frost, with Arthur playing police archivist Ernie Trigg; and again in 2008, in the comic fantasy, The Colour of Magic, where Arthur starred as a character called "Rerpf". He also appeared briefly with his brother in an episode of The Darling Buds of May.
At school, David developed a defence against bullies by making them laugh: and took on the lead role in the school play, when the boy playing it developed measles. He then joined the local Amateur Dramatic Society. On leaving school, David wanted to follow in his brother Arthur's footsteps as an actor, but their father insisted that he first get a trade. So, for nine months he trained as an electrician, before giving up his girlfriend at the time, and becoming a jobbing actor.
Read more about this topic: David Jason
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“We have good reason to believe that memories of early childhood do not persist in consciousness because of the absence or fragmentary character of language covering this period. Words serve as fixatives for mental images. . . . Even at the end of the second year of life when word tags exist for a number of objects in the child’s life, these words are discrete and do not yet bind together the parts of an experience or organize them in a way that can produce a coherent memory.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“There is no intrinsic worth in money but what is alterable with the times, and whether a guinea goes for twenty pounds or for a shilling, it is ... the labour of the poor and not the high and low value that is set on gold or silver, which all the comforts of life must arise from.”
—Bernard Mandeville (1670–1733)